In today’s complex world, creativity is the key to finding and living your passion. Whatever that passion is— cooking, technology, writing, or even plumbing — Creative You reveals your own personal style of creativity to help you build an environment of innovation at work and home.

Discover your creative personality type with a simple quiz and detailed descriptions of the sixteen person­ality types. Plus, tools and techniques show you how to apply creativity to your everyday life. Drop excuses like I’m too old to start being creative and creativity is only for artists. Confidently use creativity to live your passion by using your natural style. Whether you are starting from scratch or enhancing an already developed skill, discover the creative you that you’ve been searching for.

EXCERPT

"Every child is an artist; the problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up."
-- Pablo Picasso

Ask anyone when they stopped thinking of themselves as creative, and you’ll hear something like, “As a child, I used to like to sing, dance, and draw until one day in second grade, when my teacher yelled at me for coloring the sky a different color than blue. The other kids laughed, and that was the last time I tried anything creative.” Variations of this story are repeated over and over again, generation after generation, as so many of us were discouraged from using our talents in the very act of thinking imaginatively just because of a teacher’s creative differences.

How many of us decided that we were NOT creative while we were still children using crayons? How many of us as children or young adults were not properly taught the varied techniques of drawing, dancing, singing, cooking, or starting a small business? In light of the criticism from those who wanted us to do it in a way that was natural to them but never felt right to us—and without the right kind of instruction from someone who understood our individual creative strengths—the easy answer was to throw up our hands in frustration and say, “I can’t.” For many of us, this assumption came much too early.

Your Creative License

Have you ever wanted to pick up a brush and paint but stopped because you think that you can barely draw stick ﬁgures? Have you ever wanted to become a dancer, but you think you have two left feet? Or a singer, but you think you’re too tone deaf ? Or a cook, but you are too afraid because you burn toast? Perhaps you’ve always wanted to start a business or invent a new tool but didn’t trust that your ideas would appeal to others? While there are so many different ways to be creative, there are just as many ways to feel blocked in expressing our creativity. And we ourselves are often the ﬁrst stumbling blocks on the path toward a more artful and inspired life.

Whether you can admit it to yourself or not, you’re creative—we’re all creative. When we encounter something genuinely beautiful and unusual, we often say to its creator, “You’re a real artist”; what we cannot say ourselves, others often say for us. Has a friend ever said to you, “Wow, you amaze me! I couldn’t possibly do that” when describing a meal you cooked and presented, the garden you planted, the way you wore your clothes, something you hammered together?

These accomplishments are the results of creativity. You were just working on your “regular stuff,” but others see it as unique, beautiful, and artsy—as you: “I could never cook a meal like you”; “I could never paint a house like you”; “There’s no way I could hammer a nail correctly, let alone build something that looks so pretty.” You’ll hear yourself say such things when someone ﬁnishes restoring an antique table they rescued at the ﬂea market, when someone who can’t read music plays the piano beautifully by ear, when someone designs a new home addition themselves. You’ll say it when a friend decorates an amazing cake, cooks the perfect chowder, or snaps a momentous photo- graph. And when you hear others say “I couldn’t do that” to you, that’s when you know you’re doing something special; you’re being your unique artistic self without even realizing it.

Sadly, our society makes it diﬃcult for us to embrace our inspiration and freely call ourselves artists. We interviewed artists for this book who, although they had sold hundreds of paintings at international exhibitions, still had trouble introducing themselves as artists. Why has our society made it so diﬃcult to think of ourselves as creative? Instead of associating creativity with weirdness, unproductivity, and poverty, perhaps we should instead emulate the Indonesians on the island of Bali or the Australian Aborigines, who consider every adult—and child—to be an artist at heart.

The idea that we’re either naturally creative or not is a myth; we’re all born with personality preferences that we can use to be creative in our own way and thrive. You can acknowledge this fact by giving yourself a creative license. And be literal about it: write it on a sticky note or notepad, or ﬁnd a legal form off the web that you can ﬁll out. Then place the license where it will remind you that you have the basic human right to be yourself and to use your natural creativity.